SpaceLab at the Climate Festival §112

The Climate Festival § 112 is taking place all over Norway this week, 18.-28. January, with lots of different events across the country, including contributions from SpaceLab.

The festival encourages and inspires people to support political measures to ensure a sustainable future. It highlights the Norwegian population’s commitment to climate change mitigation, and encourages collective change.

In 2016, The Climate Festival consisted of 140 events in 24 different cities and in the districts, from Svalbard in the north to Farsund in the south. This year the festival is taking place for the third time, and SpaceLab got invited to contribute at several of the events around the country.

Håvard Haarstad held a presentation in Molde on January 19th on the topic “The city’s role in climate transformation”. Haarstad argued that cities can help us solve the climate challenges if we focus on how we build them. Climate friendly and sustainable urban development can be achieved through making our cities compact, connected and liveable.

On January 20th Haarstad also gave a presentation to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens Vegvesen) in Molde on the same topic.

In Bergen Stina Oseland, PhD-student at SpaceLab, gave a talk at the event “Transformation laboratory” /Omstillingslaboratorium on January 24th. The laboratory invited enthusiasts, transformation pioneers and artists in Western Norway to “a think tank where we together methodically hunt for the really good questions”. Stina talked about transformation as a concept and put it into a theoretical context in which one looks at adaptation to climate change in three levels: resilience, transition and transformation, and linked this to urban development, our everyday lives and consumption.

Both Håvard and Stina are glad to have been given the opportunity to contribute at the Climate Festival and be heard by a lot of different people. They applaud the festival for the wide range of events and see it as an important contribution to boost climate commitment among the people all over the country.